▶ Year || 502
▶ Season || Spring
▶ Temp || 43℉ (8℃) - 70℉ (21℃)
▶ Weather || The nip of Winter has begun to ebb away, replaced by the gentle embrace of Spring as it ushers in new life. Plant life peeks out from the melting snow and birdsong fills the air once more, calling drowsy residents from their hideaways. Slowly but surely, the continent’s hustle and bustle returns.

"Like his companion, he steadies himself with the salt on his tongue, the sharp-sour smell of the sea like a fresh-split oyster. The beach, for him, is like an intersection between dreams and reality: endless, lulling, pungent and terribly dangerous. Realer than anything, and a mystery he will never solve. It is the only un-knowing he has learned to be comfortable with." From This Grand Show is eternal

When the bay speaks, Eik's body wants to sigh. This is the feeling he's felt, he's thought about so many times, and yet he's never had the right words for it. Some things you don't know until you speak them, others until you hear them. He smiles widely, and would clap his hands like an excited little prince if he could. How wonderful to hear your thoughts echoed back to you! For a wanderer, uncertain with whom and how to connect, it is a relief to know some of his thoughts are not so insane.

(you think you know the depth of your mind, but how could you- everyone who does, does not return)

Eik's delight is bright and short-lived, the gravity of the conversation pulling him back to earth but not without a fuzzy sense of happiness and relaxation-- the theme of this conversation, as it would turn out. At least for Eik.

"You have talent with words," he says simply, with a sigh. That tugging, is it destiny? Or hope? Or is everyone just pulling at each other, swinging each other round like stars in a galaxy? And if so- what lies at the center? Oh, we must occupy ourselves with the grandest of things- the center, the core, the meaning of it all-- if only we could truly be content with the waves, the sand, the day and its promises or lack thereof. The way things are.

But then we wouldn't be ourselves, and there is some sense of shame in that.

Eik's ears prick at the word magic. Oh beautiful world and all your mysteries. "Magic?" He echoes, he asks. It is still a foreign thing to him. It is not just magic that intrigues him but the man's lightness in speaking of a home he cannot go back to, at least not on a whim. Ravos- a name that gives wings to his imagination. A place he will never see with his own eyes.

Of course, the conversation comes back to himself, and he takes a breath. The salt air and the cold water steady him, they keep the sadness from carrying him away. "I wandered alone for many years. It might have been that feeling guiding me... But I think I was going away from one place, not toward another." He shakes his head, that in-between period hazy in his memories. He remembers picking up some of his scars, beating them into his body, and he remembers the exhaustion of a refugee. And of course the madness, which hovers still like city smog- better on some days, but usually heavy. "Any place would do. Somehow this was the first." How does one walk for years without finding anyone? Was he going in circles all that time, like that snake swallowing its own tail?

Things are what they are, and as much as he likes to ask unanswerable questions, there are some things he inexplicably leaves be. He could have ended up anywhere, but he's here now. Is there some divine purpose in that or was it chance? Oddly that is not a question he ponders, although divinity is often on his mind. "Do you miss Ravos?" He asks suddenly, again intrigued by the name of this faraway land-- and its warm waters.

- - -There is no better way to know usE I Kthan as two wolves, come separately to a wood

@Asterion Daww I'm glad! I had a nice one as well! And no apologies, I don't mind long posts... They make me feel better about my own occasional monoliths xD

His smile then is a contradictory thing, at once pleased and rueful, and his dark gaze slips to the grey’s. “Thank you,” he says, and draws in a breath like he might say more (say I wanted a talent with war, not words, or maybe just sigh) but their careful, casual conversation is a current and this is not a moment for it to eddy.

Oh, but he wonders. Is he drawn to spill his secrets to this stranger because they don’t know one another’s names? Or because, even nameless, he feels something like a friend? Asterion doesn’t know what to make of it, the way he feels uneasy and happy all at once; he turns his gaze out to sea as though he is suddenly shy. It is very bright, now, with the sunlight glancing off the water.

Like his companion, he steadies himself with the salt on his tongue, the sharp-sour smell of the sea like a fresh-split oyster. The beach, for him, is like an intersection between dreams and reality: endless, lulling, pungent and terribly dangerous. Realer than anything, and a mystery he will never solve.

It is the only un-knowing he has learned to be comfortable with.

Once again he’s nodding, feeling foolish for it but unable to help the kinship he feels with the stallion’s words. The recognition. “Yes,” he says, sounding so decisive that he would blush if he were able. The bay does not elaborate, but he is suddenly very self-aware, and yet curious as to what else they might share. He keeps his gaze trained, now, on the sand before them, or the gulls above them, or the craggy rocks that jut like wrecked ships from the shallow water ahead.

The question catches him off guard, but only because he doesn’t know the answer. Is it a betrayal of the gods he’d known – of the unicorn, his Lionheart – if he doesn’t? Is it a betrayal of Florentine and Aislinn and the feeling of being intricately connected to somebody if he does?

The bay stops, and opens his mouth, and closes it again. His smile is almost sheepish, when he turns it on the grey. “No, and yes. I miss…who I thought I was going to be.” Warrior, hero – foolish, dreaming boy he’d been. But there had been gods, and magic, and the unicorn with her laugh like a bell and her eyes like cold fire and her certainty, realer than anything, of what was right and what was wrong and what must be done to tear down the latter. He had loved her, but he had loved her like a boy loves a hero in a story.

The realization leaves him bereft. He is not given to introspection, and this is why: it is a painful thing, to learn yourself. He forces it out, gives it to the saltwater, almost forgets he isn’t alone. It’s a confession and he feels hollow when it’s done. “I miss the idea of having a cause. I don’t know who I am when there’s no…direction. I don’t know what to do in this place. I just keep walking.” He shakes his head, certain his companion would happily take back what he’d said about being good with words. “I’m sorry,” he says softly, gaze flitting back to the grey’s. “I’m sure this isn’t what you came here for.”

@Eik ahhhh so late and sooooo long, I’m sorry. I <3 Eik and whatever happens with this thread they should definitely have another. He’s forcing Asterion into some very wordy revelations xD

So here they stand, two directionless boys, neither with the option of returning home. They share the same wandering heart, and Eik wonders how their paths will diverge from here. He's never encountered someone before who seemed to be in nearly the same place as himself. And how else would the two have stumbled across each other in this vast new world?

"I'm sorry," the stranger (of course that word is wrong) says, "I'm sure this isn't what you came here for."

Eik brushes off the apology with shrug and a soft sigh. "I don't know what I came here for. Maybe that was exactly it." A pause. "I suppose we'll only find direction when we stop looking for it." Isn't that the way the gods toy with mortals? You can't find a thing by looking for it, can't achieve by trying. You must simply give up, surrender to the flow of things- but you mustn't try to do so. It is a stupid game, but he can't figure out how to escape it-- except, of course, death.

The morning brightens into day. It is nothing magnificent or beautiful or even particularly special, just a new day, the same as yesterday but with the many possibilities of a different tomorrow. And sure as the sun, there is a slow, steady movement inside of him-- forgotten, for a time, but remembered now.

They say all good things must end but he is not sure he believes it. To accept such a thing is to relinquish mastery of your own universe, and what a shame that would be. Eik turns now to Solterra with relative precision, for though he may not always know where he is, he is always quite aware of where he came from.

We dare not call it home, not yet.

Certainly the stranger feels it too, this turn of the page. They are, after all, floating on the same current, feeling the river beginning to split. "What's your name?" He asks, though it does not seem so important anymore. There is something more important here, something he feels but could never put a name to- it is carried by the undercurrent of the universe, the one that flows deeper than words.

There is a small smile, almost private. "I'm Eik. I hope we'll meet again." He believes-- he would almost say that he knows they will, but what good will it do to say so out loud? Certainly the bay can hear it in his voice, in his intonation the wink of a magician as he fretfully searches for the missing card- only to pull it from behind your ear.

He leaves hoofprints in the sand behind him.

- - -There is no better way to know usE I Kthan as two wolves, come separately to a wood

ahhhh the bromance!!! <333 sorry for essentially a very lengthy exit heh, it just felt right. They of course need another thread soon!

It’s enough to quiet him, for a moment, though the childish part of him wants to protest. It’s like a riddle, and aren’t riddles supposed to have answers? But he softens his lips into a slim line and tilts his head, looking out to sea, letting the words wash over him again and again like the water running up the sand. Like maybe this time, or the next, he would solve it.

Of course he can’t, of course it isn’t that kind of thing. It’s like the line between morning and day, and here they stand in the sunlight below a dozen seagulls searching for breakfast.

He is almost surprised by the question; Asterion feels they’ve come so far, this strange kinship, that surely names are something they should know. But he turns to the gray with a little smile and finds the same kind of expression mirroring him.

“Asterion,” he offers, and his smile grows wider at the name, at what follows. “Yes,” he agrees, as firmly as though they already have plans in place, and marvels at the feeling of sunlight on his cool wet skin as he watches Eik recede across the sand.

A moment later, he turns and begins to pick his own way up the beach, toward Terrastella.